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A Changing Ecology

While the high politics of the country takes up all media and legislative energy, our people are facing an uncertain future with no food and water for which we have no survival strategy.

The threat of climate change is visible in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which has been suffering severely due to flooding in recent years. Persistent weather anomalies have led to low agricultural productivity, presenting an uncertain future of food security for the province.

The Climate Change Centre at the University of Agriculture, Peshawar, conducted a recent study that has some ominous predictions for the future. It suggests that that the surging temperature will make the land unsuitable for cultivating wheat, maize and sugarcane, with an alarming increase in the growth of pests and fungus in the region.

Access to water is already a challenge for the province, as the water table is rapidly dropping and large swaths of land are water logged. The KP government has planned to reforest the area and plant a billion trees by the year 2018 to address this problem and has already made impressive headway by planting around 190m trees over a period of two years.

Poor infrastructure is preventing a lower utilisation of water and it is hoped that water supply will improve after the construction of the Chasma Right Bank Canal (CRBC). In February 2016, the federal government also expressed its commitment towards helping KP for developing its infrastructure so that it may utilise its full share of water.

Climate change is a looming threat and the people have to participate in the process of building resilience to the disasters, which is something wholly missing from our provincial and federal plans.